“My Sister’s Mom”

The following post is something I wrote my freshman year of college – back in 2005. My dad recently found a printed copy within his documents, and I reproduced it here, word-for-word. I hope you enjoy learning about one of the most special people in my life, Rose. This blog, from the vault, will give you just a glimpse into the impact she has had on me. At the end, I’ll give you an update about where she’s at today – enjoy!

Rose and I met our senior year in high school. She was in a really bad place. A house in which her mother was slowly dying and her father was hourly nursing his grief with alcohol. She began living with me. Life was now enhanced in every way possible. The content in my closet instantly doubled and became overwhelmingly pink. The hollow silence of the late hours now echoed with girly chit chat as we fell asleep. now, I had a comrade, a partner in crime, a “Texas Twin,” a best friend, and thank God, a sister. Rose inadvertently forced lasting lessons on my naive heart. I learned the pain of grief, hard time, and true, excruciating loss. However, my deprived heart also received lessons on happiness, uncontrollable joy, and unconditional love.

I was there the day the oncologist told the family that their best was not going to be enough. They would just be able to send her mom home with a cocktail of potent narcotics, hoping to dull the pain. When the doctor broke the news no one cried but me. Everyone was too busy being strong and asking the doctor the specifics of what he was saying. I felt the all too common sing in my eyes. I looked up at the ceiling, hoping that the tears would roll back into my eyes as freely as they were rolling out. I wanted to shout, “Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand what the doctor is saying? This is it! He is telling you the end is in sight, that it would take beyond a miracle to keep her alive!” I had to leave the room. I faked a phone call and politely excused myself. I went in the stairwell and cried.

It was like crying tiny shards of glass. The pain of it hurt so bad and was leaving my body through my eyes. I just wanted to climb back into my sheltered suburban lifestyle, my safe place, and forget that bad things really do happen to good people. Rose just would not cry. As she grit her teeth and took a long slow breath she would rhetorically ask, “What good will crying do?” I didn’t have an answer, but for some reason I could not stop. I cried for the both of us.

The months to follow were slow and excruciating, for Rose’s mom, Rose, the rest of the family, and everyone who watched her slowly fade out of this life and into the next. Her mom was now at the point that she was the personification of death. The countless treatments had left her once flowing brown hair looking like a fragile antique. If she stopped moving or paused too long in between breaths we’d look at each other with child like eyes asking, “Is this it?” Concern presents the loved ones with a sick paradox. You get to the point where you hope that the person will die quickly because you don’t want them to suffer. That is a horrible thing to feel and say. Cancer finds ways of twisting the norms.

Finally, one morning early, I felt the warmth of another body in bed with me. I squinted through my eyelashes and saw Rose curled up next to me. I know it. It is that intuition that has no real explanation. I knew that her mom was gone. It is true; you know know what to say. So all I said was, “do you need a hug?” In the still of that morning, January 19, 2004, I heard a quiet, “yes.”

Stifled sobs could be heard throughout the tiny chapel. It was my sister’s mom in that smooth oak box. It was a woman I so desperately wished I could have had more time getting to know. It was a woman who had not been given a fair shot at life. At age 39, she should have not had to lose a battle to breast cancer. A scripted smirk was on her face as she lay there in permanent stillness. She looked so peaceful.

I remember the moment when the pastor finished his brief sermon. He slowly looked down at the casket, back up at us, paused, and then said, “She would tell you all right now, ‘Love me but let me go.'” The tears that had been building up pressure within Rose for over a year finally ruptured the wall of hope she was holding them back with. An onslaught of tears followed. She began to sob hysterically and cry out for her mommy. Her voice cracked with grief as she let go of the emotional numbness she had been clinging to like a life raft. She really heard what the paster was saying. This was it, the first day of the rest of her life, with out her mom. Without my sisters mom.

It has been 20 years since our senior year in high school, when we went from friends to sisters – two decades since we laid her mom to rest. I’m so excited to tell you how amazing Rose is doing. She is her moms hopes & dreams come true. Rose is now an OB-GYN, married to an amazing man, and the mother to two amazing kids. As a 17-year-old she was faced with profound loss and still chose to keep moving forward, one step at a time. She lives her life in a way that honors her mom each and every day. She is also now part of our family and has found her “home” with us – she is my sister, after all.